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Parent and student pairs lining up for the balloon popping game!

Guan Ai’s annual New Year’s (Yuan Dan 元旦） Celebration took place yesterday on a chilly but clear day. After breakfast, motorbikes started piling up outside the school gate as students’ guardians arrived. Some of the them had just returned from working in cities and hadn’t seen their kids in weeks or months. Each class set up tables outside to show off students’ work from the semester. Excited children answered questions about their drawings, posters, handwriting samples, and even science experiments. In addition to a Parent’s Meeting held earlier this month, this “Open House”-style was meant to help guardians better understand Guan Ai’s educational philosophy and methods.

One of the liveliest activities was a “Marketplace Experiment” in which students “sold” friendship bracelets that they had made themselves. Guardians got special “Guan Ai Money” to make purchases in this “internal economy” where students exercised marketing, production, and sales skills. A lot of bargaining was going on as students displayed their different colors and designs and competed to make the most profit while recouping the cost of their thread. (This activity was the brainchild of RCEF Teaching Coach Ron Sung. He will describe it in more detail in a future post.)

After browsing the tables, everyone migrated to the back field for student performances of things they’d learned in their extracurricular classes this semester. Groups of students told stories, sang Chinese and English songs, and demonstrated jump rope and Chinese yo-yo tricks. The last event was a parent-child team competition. Twelve pairs of parents and children (more than expected!) volunteered to participate in a balloon stomping competition. It’s a bit hard to describe so we’ll be uploading a video of the whole day to RCEF’s YouTube Channel soon!

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